


Falling Asleep

by Moirin De Clermont (Slayer87)



Category: 24 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Self-Reflection, just jack thinking about his life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23492911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slayer87/pseuds/Moirin%20De%20Clermont
Summary: Suddenly he thought his whole life was comparable to a bed. A bizarre combination, perhaps, but thinking about it, he discovered that it was not so risky.
Kudos: 2





	Falling Asleep

Jack was lying on the bed of his apartment.

  
It was night, and for once he could do what everyone did at night, namely sleep. Still, he just couldn't sleep. By now his body had grown accustomed to falling asleep wherever he was if it could be a safe enough place to close his eyes, but that evening there was no way to persuade his brain to go out.

  
There had been no crisis to solve or attacks to thwart that day: it had been a 'normal' day, and he really wanted to sleep!

  
He turned to the side, hoping that a change of position would do something.

  
Suddenly he thought his whole life was comparable to a bed. A bizarre combination, perhaps, but thinking about it, he discovered that it was not so risky.

  
Like that bed his existence was periodically upset as if someone or something abruptly removed the blankets that kept his deepest being warm, leaving him in the open the innermost side of himself, until he, patiently, rebuild himself, like every morning when he put that bed in place.

  
Who knows if that mattress, on which he was now trying, in vain, to rest, he felt exposed, naked, as he felt whenever a piece of his humanity was abruptly torn from his heart, when asked to solve disasters created by others by any means, and he obeyed, conscious of having to do something, of not being able to stand still while his Country was at risk.

  
After the crisis, however, he alone had to put in place the pieces of his soul broken up into a thousand parts. He had lied, betrayed, tortured and killed countless times, and would have done so again, if necessary, but more and more often he wondered if, in the end, something human would remain inside him or if, instead, he would become a cold container of a body and nothing else; on the one hand, perhaps it would have been better. No more suffering or pain. Nothing. Only his efficiency as a servant of the Country. On the other hand, the prospect made him shiver with cold, even at that moment, when the humidity of Los Angeles made the air even warmer than it actually was.

  
Maybe he didn't want to fall asleep because he was terrified of what he could find in his nightmares, in recent years more and more frequent.

  
Abruptly he got up and went to take a light sleeping pill: perhaps that would have helped him not to mull over the events. When he returned he looked for a moment at the bed, the light sheet was thrown to one side and wrinkled, and thought that this was a precise snapshot of how he felt: rubbed almost to tears, and worn, almost creased, like that old sheet that does not he had never had time to change.

  
He lay down again, his eyes closed under the effect of the sleeping pill, and he seemed to feel, but it was certainly only a dream principle, something warm and wet on the cheek.

  
It was certainly not a tear: for years he hadn't known what crying meant.

The End


End file.
